For Ambi by Another Ambi who is not an Ambi like the other Ambi

Ambi = !

Ambi = ?

Ambi = ?!?

What is or Who is Ambi? If you like TamBrams or you have a love interest who is a TamBram, you should know this word for sure!

Ambi - Noun (Name of a person - Actually Nick Name of a person)

Usage

- Andha Ambi romba thuru thuru nu irukan (That boy is very shrewd. I dont know his name though..So use the genric term for a brahmin boy)

- Nalla ambi maari irukan (Looks very much like a cute and soft tambram guy. Here ambi is a generic name for anyone who is cute and soft tambram)

- Akkavum Ambiyum apdi ena than pesipelo ( Wonder what you bro and sis have to hush-hush about!... Here ambi refers to Bro)

So that's it? Nope! There is another Ambi whom everyone can identify with.

Here is the checklist to see if you qualify to be an "Ambi"

1. You are clean shaven and dont sport mush. You face always has a religious mark.
2. You wear Kadukkan (stud..not the Yo! Man variety...This is authentic tam stud)
3. You wear spects (and not contact lens)
4. Your hair has a wet look always (not due to gel). You wear coconut oil and comb using the long slender "sheikh cheepu".
5. Your hair style and geometry can give a run to a straight line ruler.
6. You are less than 5' 5"
7. You wear Lacoste t-shirt tucked into a tailor-stitched coffee brown pants and reebok shoes
8. You wear a sports watch or a digital watch which competes for your wrist with some religious threads that are black, grey, yellow, red or all at the same time
9. You have a cellphone that is 3310 or earlier version
10. You dont wear a belt
11. Your ponch makes ur pants go down every 5 minutes and you are the best when it comes to adjusting your pants
12. You wear pants slightly below your rib gage and not around your hip bone
13. You ride Honda Activa and not any bike ever
14. You like carnatic music than cinema music
15. You dont watch movies
16. You dont say "cool" or "awesome". You say "cute"
17. You carry a water bottle and napkin to restaurants

So what are you? Ambi? Ambi-in-the-making?

Kak Kak Ka ....Po

This thing called arranged marriage...It all starts with an arranged outing to Pizza corner :-(

You might actually hit off well in those 30 minutes..Absolutely great chemistry

• She may like urlakezhangu too - like him
• He will also like pink color - like her
• He cant believe she also likes NDTV Profit to Kolangal serial
• She is pleasantly surprised that he cooks well

And when they get married.

But then when its too late...

• He figures out she has more mush than him
• She finds that he can snore better than a bear
• He finds she has a clumsy way of walking
• She finds he can't tell between romance and sex. Its all three letters whichever way
• He finds she buys her clothes from pondy bazaar still
• She finds he never uses the flush

Appapa..am petrified at the possibility of these happening.You know how I ward off marriage threats..Amma..am shifting job in 6 months..Pondati varadhukula car vanganum..If I move to a new job I need to stay for 6 months,steady the ship and then get married.Idhu minimum 1 year marriage vacation idea and can postpone indefenitely :-)

Single ho !

Summers of 69

Its not unusual for us to turn back the folders (no longer pages) of our life and take out certain days as " (the) best days" and then there are bunch of other days which we refer as "those good times"

As I write now, I am closing out one of those good days!

The day was generally good to begin with and ended great!

No milk pouches lying around, nothing to cook, nowhere to rush -The day started like how a saturday should.I strolled down to the hair saloon and had a mild makeover, as though I intuitively knew that the day is going to be memorable.

I watched FIFA with Germany somehow managing to win a high scoring opening game and Poland struggling with its form.

The noon was how it was supposed to be. Nice food, pristine sun and laid back mind. Came back home and cleaned my bedroom that apart from my dear laptop, bed and the wires, had accumalated more than 100 grams of dust. Cleaning is reviving. And no better day than saturday to do it. Did it!

The nice day became good when Suresh called. He is a good friend who has come down from Bangalore. I co-ordinated a quicky getto and we meet at 4 at Cafe Coffee Day. Lamented about jobs, ranted about ourselves, worried about the future of the smoking (literally) hot chics in CCD and amply drunk carmel laced frappe.Had a mouthful to talk about old stories. Re-distributed old gossips to the eager ears of Lopa and Suresh. Gossiping is a good addiction than smoke and alcohol. So I profess this for fellow teetotallers.

A great day becomes more memorable when you meet another gang of good friends in a place that stood for good ol' days. I went from her treat straight to boat club at adyar. True to the charm of adyar, this is one place which is adventorous, outdoorsy yet conservative.The night's charm was captured well by the Volkswagen Beetle that stood right outside the boatclub verandah. Met a couple of ex-collegues. They boozed. I juiced.

In the background sang Bryan Adams " Those were the best days of my life" and said Tamnus of Narnia "Not everyday you make good friends. Come over to the corner. There is tea, cookies and cakes. We'll have sardines"

Maniratnamesque

As I beat my suddenly engulfed loneliness by resorting to cooking therapy, I switched on the TV today. “Iruvar” was playing.

There are some reasons for which am not a big fan of mani ratnam movies. Cinema to me is a medium that lends itself beautifully to capturing period themes. Iruvar is one such storyline.

Its about the friendship of MGR and Karunanidhi. How realistic a plot can you get than this?

As I write this now, I am just half an hour into the movie.I see a few unnecessary exaggerations that are typical of maniratnam movies.To me, maniratnam's characters are etched to me rememberable if not realistic, cute even if its out of place, always have an admirable (yet unnecessary) modulation (If you don know what I mean - Hold your neck with one handral tight, hold your breath and start speaking - Arvindsamy,madhavan they all did that)..

Now cut back to Iruvar, as a case in point.

To show MGR and Karunanidhi’s friendship – For no reason they are in each other’s hands almost all the time they meet and they are in some eccentric spell of poetic madness. From when did tamil culture promote hugging as a form of sharing affection between men, at least in public? When you make history you hug, But you do not make its lead characters hug all the time, when you make a ordinary scenes in a history movie!

Aishwarya Rai and Mohanlal’s marriage – Their honeymoon night. They run around the bed a la madhavan/shalini in alaipayuthe. Come on – That was not how 1960’s girls were (even if it were jayalalitha types)

Maniratnam one liners –
Sample this : ML”: Ena pidichirka? Aish: Naliku solren (No they don’t talk that way. Do they?

Cinema Set – You are showing black and white era and the set shows twilight in its blue, orange and yellow. From when did art directors give real colors when they know all that’s going to be shown is black and white?

Prakash Raj’s idealism – I understand he is a poet in this movie. However poets who are idealists talk regular tamil under normal circumstances. They don’t have to ooze idealism in poetic overtones whenever they speak. It does add to the aura, but that’s very maniratamesque! A thirvaroor based tamil young man in 1960 speaks with the same modulation that arvind samy speaks in minsara kanavu. How realistic is that?

In short maniratnam’s characters are cute in their own way, well etched and they act for an audience but not really realistic!

CMMi Training - (My) Agenda

This was a two days training which earned a lot of my curse as it arrogantly intruded into my private weekends without permission.

The agenda of the training (which is a curtain raiser before we implement CMM in our company) is as follows:

• 9 AM - 9 15 AM - Intro by the KPMG trainer
• 9-15 AM - 10 AM - Introduction to CMM Levels
• 10 AM - 10:03 AM - A raincheck on the dressing sense of participants (especially on the disappointing sense of fashion of select few)
• 10-03 AM - 10-20 AM - Interactive session with KPMG trainer on SEPG (Software Engineering Practice Group) and their role in internal audits
• 10-20 AM to 10-30 AM - A quick mental replay of NDTV Health snippet on Back Ache and ergonomics
• 10-30 AM - 10-45 AM - Tea break
• 10-45 AM to 10-50 AM- An anatomical comparision of the unfamiliar techlead in the CMMi training session with ex-girl friend
• 10-50 AM - 11 AM - Practice Areas under CMM Level 2 and Level 3
• 11 AM to 11-01 AM - A cursory check on how people look figuratively when looked from back, with oiled heads exposed well in tubelight illumination
• 11-01AM to 11-15 AM - The difference between CMM Level 2 and Level 3 expectations in terms of setting and adhering to practice area tasks
• 11-15 AM to 11-30 AM - Where IPPD would be applicable and how different it is from SE /SW
• 11-30 AM to 11-40 AM - A self introspection on failed relationships
• 11-40 AM to 11-45 AM - Subjective and Biased evaluation of questions asked by irritating colleagues
• 11-45 AM - 11-50 AM - Unwanted, Unplanned yet executed bio-break
• 11-50 AM - 12 Noon - Clueless observation of intellectually arrogant hara-kiri between senior management and the trainer on whether principles of XP can be fitted without omissions into CMM template
• 12-00 Noon - 12-02 - A casual analysis of why his butt is so protruding
• 12-02 PM to 12-03 - A silent sigh of dismay thinking about Kaavya Viswanathan for her dubious endeavour with "How Opal Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life"
• 12-04-12-07 PM - Role of SEPG in defining process routines specific to our company
• 12-07 PM - 12-30 PM - Tailoring guidelines for CMM Level 3
• 12- 30 PM - 12-35 PM - Explosive orientation of dark, underground unionistic tendencies to coerce and collect participants' voice for lunch break
• 12- 35 PM - 12-39 PM - Countless recounts of number of lines in a slide and a mental calculation of time taken for each line by the trainer and multiplication with the number of lines to arrive at the 90% confidence limits for when the lunch break would be!
• 12-40 PM - An attempt to restrict physical movements to synchronize eye contact with a female colleague to make it look like a natural courtesy question, when I would ask her for lunch

I am not sure if anyone would be so honest about their value intakes in such highly important initiatives where the company ends up paying through their larynx and alveoli.But aren't all meetings having similiar agendas at least for the participants?

Then why bother giving us a print out of the training booklet with the first page being agenda? We already know it..LOL

This post is my tribute to those who have lost countless weekends in the name of training for the middle management (a.k.a suckers who have to do the grunt work of implemetation, when the boss can happily read about Preity Zinta's outfit in Cannes film festival and more to my irk, write comments for that article!)

Whats the plan?

What is the plan?What the hell is a plan?

Its not the corporate goobledgook am talking here.Friday evenings and late evenings, around your cubicles you would suddenly start seeing activity index soaring (sorry...i am a stock market buff...........I willfully inserted this, just in case a lady reader contemplates long term).

Well coming back to the point - These PLANNERS or HAPPENERS just whiz around lobbies and blocks busily for something that would put an event manager to shame.God save if u dont participate in this event planning event..AM talking about the weekly ritual call "Weekend Outing"...People who know you well or people who desperately wanna talk to you, just come by to ask "Whassup for saturday buddy" or versions of it like, "Whats the plan for tomorrow", "Whats the PoA for tomorrow"

BTW the C-Levels or C-wannabes use PoA - Thats Plan of Action...They even have a PoA to booze..Gosh..Give us a break...

Lets now see why am so bugged at this 'Whats the plan nonsense"

Firstly am peaceful with life. I dont have to let my hair down to feel peaceful. Even if i want to my hair always is curly and spiky.It gives me more tension to look groomed than to be a spiko and stay at home..So get it please..Am peaceful..Thanks..No Thanks for your invites

Secondly, I mean what the hell? Should you always plan your weekend..Why cant life be simple ya? What should you get nervous breakdown if you dont go out a saturday? I am at peace watching amitabh bachchan or sun news or even sun music at the comfort of my home.

Thirdly the ritual of deciding where to go really gets me wild. We discuss

• Satyam theater ( any one with an ounce of brain can say you have to PLAN AHEAD to get tickets on a saturday night)
• Restaurant (they always think savera, residency..poor me..i can cook sambar at home for 1/100 of the cost and release version 2.0, v 3.0 for the next two days)
• Pubs (Here you go)
  I am wild coz after all permutations you end up choosing pubs and then why waste my cellphone bills for co-ordination calls? (Its a related matter that these PLANNERS run out of money every thursday evening..oh did i miss to add, mysteriously?)

Pubs - Silly !

If you think smoking gives you peace and passive smoking gives nirvana..am sorry..your father must be a dork to have created you

If bloddy marie and pinacolada are good ways to sip over with friends....guys you dont have a rat's brain..your drink does not cost 350 bucks..its actually 2350 bucks including service charges (Levied by dutiful police men)

Ah..moreover it smells like..aargh..dont ask me to say

Crowd - You said crowd? Crr-oowd? Ah hha haa...All see you see is some irish looking chics and revlon model wanna bes there, amply protected and served by saif ali khan's cousin types..So if you ever say.."Lets check out the crowd", you are a bloody public oogling incapable loser.If everyone comes to check out the crowd, who the hell is the crowd man? Tell me Tell me!

Side dishes and Orange Juice Mocktails - Pain and agony are the words. Half cooked potatos ...who needs potato wedges for 300 Rs..I need urlakezhangu kaara curry (spicy potato curry)..Can a pub give.. God htat tropicana orange juice sold as orangy tango drink..hehe..liar liar your pub should go down on fire

Social networking - Oh no..let me have a laughter break..in that loud music that gives competition to a constipated yell,you are going to network?

After all these guys (well also girls) ask me why i dont drink or why I look outta place in a pub..

Simple - I can buy tropicana for 20 bucks, watch Ftv or even surya tv if am desperate about crowd (they show everything which a pub cant), I can breathe good air at home and moreover make better potato curry and sambar..

If none of them give me peace, i just sleep or go to beach

Guys get it to ur rodent brains..I plan for just one thing during weekend..that is when to shave..because if i plan well, i can avoid monday morning shaves and still look well shaven...

So the next time you ask me "Whats the plan"..
The answer is "Am gonna shave at 9 30 PM saturday night", after a south indian curd rice dinner and ananda vikatan...

Its a child's play

Tiny lil kid

She'll play with that sparkle balls

Till she sells them all

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Paal manam maara-ch chirumi
indha minu-minu pandhudan vilayadukiral
Elaa-p pandhum avalukke
avai vittru-p pogum mun.....

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Inspired by the scene of a little girl selling sparkling elastic balls, getting engrossed to the pieces she sells...